Category: Blog

Hi everyone!

This is a presentation I did for “Conservation Biology and Sustainability: Preserving the Planet,” one of my Columbia pre-college classes last summer.

I’ve never been shy, and I’m not quiet, but many people think I am.  During my 8th grade year of middle school, I was referred to as quiet, though not directly. A month ago, I was told that I’m known for being “shy.” I’ve always disliked being labeled shy and quiet because it makes me feel misunderstood – I’m exactly the opposite.   

Yet, as I reflect, I can see the ways that I act belie my inner social, extrovert nature. I choose to be on my phone during some circumstances where I could instead be socializing with others. I put a fair amount of focus into getting my school work done. I worry about what people think of me which falsely portrays a shy observer nature, when I don’t talk to new people because I fear that they’re judging me.  Also, I have high-functioning autism, which sometimes creates a mismatch between my feelings and how I express myself.

I get more energy from hanging out with my friends and classmates at school than I do alone in my room. Sometimes, I enjoy sitting and listening to music alone with my thoughts, but eventually I start feeling lonely. I begin to wonder if people are hanging out and having fun without me because no one wants to invite someone who they assume, based on prior observations, will just sit in a corner doing their own thing.

However, multiple times, my concern that I’ve been excluded is soothed and contradicted by the constant reminder how much people care about me every day when I walk around school, and everyone says, “hi, how are you?” in the hall. I’ve grown to understand that I need to change my focus from my phone, homework, and being judged, and just jump in and be kind.

It’s a two-way street. The more time I spend questioning others’ perceptions of me as shy or quiet, the more I appear to be exactly the way I don’t want to be seen. It’s self-fulfilling. I will still need to be vocal about how I feel just as I am about my autism, but I also need to become more aware of my body language and the effect is has on the world’s perception of who I am; my personality.

                                      

 

Hi everyone!

I’ve never been a fan of princesses. I always thought they were too girly, and didn’t represent girls in a flattering light. I thought princesses portrayed the female part of society as weak, overly trusting, and needing to be rescued and loved by the strong, brave male part of society. I became critical of Disney because many of their movies center around princesses. I’ve always been a firm believer in the importance of diversity, equality, and social justice, and my education has certainly played a role in my awareness of the inequalities and stereotypes of the world.

Recently, however, I have started to try to have more of an open mind about Disney.  Like me, Walt Disney has autism, and I admire him for overcoming the challenges of autism.  I’m also trying to give people from older generations the benefit of the doubt and understand that attitudes about gender evolve. Walt Disney lived before modern ideas of stereotyping, so may not be not completely fair to judge him based on more evolved standards of inclusion.

I had another chance to think about Disney princesses last weekend. I saw Ralph Breaks the Internet, and it portrayed Disney princess differently.  They preferred to wear t-shirts instead of dresses. They were also instinctively, fiercely protective of each other when Vanellope, Wreck It Ralph’s friend and a stranger to the princesses, initially came into their presence. The true, inner perspectives and personalities of the princesses was with a modern outlook who hated how they were stereotyped and defined by relying on men for rescue and love.

I’m proud and supportive of the important step forward that Disney, which is a company so influential to kids and their families, has taken to express a side of the princesses that accurately represents girls and women in a diverse, modern way.

 

Hello everyone!

I know it’s been a long time since I posted my last blog post. I’ll write more regularly this summer.

As many of you know from my Instagram posts, I went to see Hamilton, and have taken several tours focused on Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers (and mothers, such as Eliza Hamilton). I love the Hamilton musical and have learned a lot about the history on which one of my heroes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, based it. This post discusses the controversial issue of gun control and the role of gun violence in Hamilton.  

Founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the only two founders of America that I knew even a few facts about before I saw Hamilton. I didn’t know anything about any of the other founding fathers or mothers. One reason I didn’t acknowledge and wasn’t interested in who the founding fathers were because I assumed that they all had old (not modern), racist, sexist, and overall highly judgmental views that I didn’t agree with at all.

In planning our trip to New York, my parents researched Hamilton, and as soon as we got on the plane leaving Seattle, I listened to the entire Hamilton playlist on a loop and got to know it by heart.

After seeing the play and going on tours about Hamilton, I found myself rapping along to all the songs and loving a man who lived in a time where equality between race, gender, religion (etc.) wasn’t that important to society. Yet the more I reflected on the musical, the more I appreciated that Lin Manuel-Miranda called our attention to social justice topics throughout the musical. Issues of race, gender equity, and power permeate the musical.   

Another issue the musical raises is gun violence.  There are guns throughout the musical because it centers around the Revolutionary War and eventually the final result that every event has slowly led up to is the fateful Hamilton vs. Burr duel of 1804.  Although gunfire is part of the soundtrack various times throughout the musical and no character expressly criticizes guns, I believe Lin Manuel-Miranda wanted us to reflect on the consequences of gun violence in history and present day. After all, our country was forever changed because Hamilton and John Laurens died (by being shot) before they could abolish slavery.  When their time was up, they had not and were unable to have done enough–slavery persisted for decades, and racism remains as a constant reminder and is at the root of our toxic political environment.

As I reflect on Hamilton, I have thought a lot about gun violence and the place of the Second Amendment in our society.  In their time, the founding fathers and colonists needed guns to protect themselves against British soldiers. Although the Second Amendment may have made sense in that context, today it is overly vague and should at the very least be modernized. I think the founding fathers, and most certainly Hamilton, would agree. I think this is true for a few reasons. Modern-day guns are immensely more dangerous than the guns the founding fathers used. With today’s guns, a duel would almost always be lethal–the participants would be too nervous to risk aiming at the sky because their opponent’s gun would be more accurate and harmful. Individual citizens do not need to fight against their government.  We have a professional military to fight against other governments. Furthermore, guns would be of little use against the insanely powerful weapons the government has. Individual use of guns have led to a horrible cost: mass shootings, that vastly outweighs their benefit.

The founding fathers weren’t perfect, Hamilton wasn’t perfect, and I probably wouldn’t agree with most of the founding fathers’ views — perhaps with the exception of Hamilton, who seems to have had by far the most progressive views of all of them (more on that in future posts). However, when it comes to the Second Amendment, I think we would all agree that there is a significant difference between protection of a person’s honor and their life and needless massacres of thousands of people every year.

 

Hi everyone!

In middle school, I was horrified to find someone say, “I’m going hunting with my family this weekend!” For me, that was equal to committing a sin.  I impulsively retorted angrily that I can’t believe that they would do something so horrible.  No one commented and I felt like maybe everyone else was thinking that I should keep my personal opinions in my head.  Later on, I heard that numerous others had told her similar things as an attempt to convince her to stop hunting.  I felt bad, and while there normally wasn’t any excuse for hunting, I was willing to apologize and hear from her what perhaps I’d missed.

I learned that she hunted a species that aren’t endangered which I felt some relief about. I still felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t continue to pry, and I let it go.

I wouldn’t ever hunt, but I think there may be a few exceptions for it to be okay, not good but okay.  Hunting for survival is fine; that’s what any predatory species would do naturally.  As long as the killed animal is treated with care, all its parts are used as clothes/food (practical reasons), it is not an endangered species, and it has not been killed simply for the fun of hunting or for money.

But unfortunately, in our society, there’s a pretty strong view that hunting and killing animals is fun.  Hunting games in arcades and on phones reinforce and perpetuate this view.  Until we agree as a society that killing any type of animal (without considering what it truly means to take the life of another) is wrong this type of “fun” will go on.

I am optimistic that society will ultimately agree that killing any animal for our personal, selfish, materialistic benefits is wrong.  We can all agree that killing a human (scientifically classified also as an animal) is wrong.  And luckily, we recently saw society rise up against killing elephants.  I think we are close to an agreement that hunting other animals like deer or birds for “fun” is wrong too.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my fifth blog post!  In this post, I will talk about something the human race constantly struggles with: power.

Unfortunately, history and present-day provide many examples of humanity’s struggle for power for reasons of race, religion, gender, learning style, and love. Yet underneath all those reasons lies the main reason: fear of losing control and from that, a fear of the unknown.

In a commercialized society, the desire for power/control becomes even more defined. Non-human animals are an easy target because unlike humans, they can’t fight back as easily. We dominate them in many ways with cages, testing dangerous chemicals on them, and making them fight for entertainment, and we fear animals such as cats because they’re “unpredictable”, and they don’t “obey” like dogs.

We use the term animal as a negative term to call a human, and the word for a female, mother dog as a derogatory term towards women. (While this term has been sometimes redefined in another connotation of cool/sassy, it still has a negative impact on many and should be used only after a fair bit of contemplation of its necessity.) This provides a double negative for both humans and animals, and unfortunately, these terms are used constantly in daily life.

Animals, religion, race, love, gender, learning styles—they’re all connected by the fear of our differences. We have a long way to go, but in order to take the first step, we must choose to listen, let go of some control, and perhaps the unknown will instead become known.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my fourth blog post. In this blog post I will be talking about my volunteer work with Re-Member on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

I’ve volunteered on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 4 years now. Even though I know the outline of each day based on the schedule and from past experiences, I still learn different things every time I go back. There is always more to learn and more to continue to learn.

There’s not much cell service on the reservation, so electronics aren’t as much of a distraction. I focus more on listening and learning to slow down–not having to do something every second, nor feeling like I have to. I live more in the present there because the schedule is less rigid; I don’t have to be somewhere every second of every day.

The week has workdays and days for learning about Lakota life and culture/tour days. On work days, the jobs include building bunk beds, delivering bunk beds, building steps up to entrances to houses, and putting “skirting” around trailer homes to keep them warmer.  Many of these projects involve working with power tools. I’ve worked with power tools at school too, so I wasn’t uncomfortable using them, but I became better at using them at Pine Ridge because of the different projects we do.

Every time we go to Pine Ridge we find new friends. There’s definitely a feeling of love that follows us around. That’s one of the reasons volunteering is so rewarding. The stories of the hardships and tragedies are difficult to confront, but they make me want to work harder to serve the Lakota people even more. The work we do is rewarding. For example, as I mentioned, one of our jobs is making and delivering bunk beds. The expressions and reactions of the kids who are getting beds are priceless and the adults are very appreciative and kind.

I’m grateful for the chance to do even a little to help the Lakota people. So many of them suffer. The suicide rate is heart-wrenchingly high, but that makes me more determined to let the Lakota people know that they are not alone. I will stand with them, be there to serve them, and most importantly I will listen, always.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my third blog post. In this blog post I want to talk about why I’m a vegetarian.

I can’t count the number of times people have told me, “I can’t live without meat! I love it too much.” Yes, there are instances where it’s okay if it’s for health reasons.

But some of these so called excuses aren’t good enough. I can’t force anyone to stop eating meat, and I don’t dislike or judge you if you do, but I think you should consider your reasons.

The worst problem is farmers don’t raise or slaughter animals in a humane way. We feed them hormones which not only isn’t healthy for the animals themselves, but it’s also been proven to make the meat unhealthy. The other problem is keeping the animals in tiny pens. A way to avoid this is checking if you can find animal products that mention “grass fed” or “free range.”

We treat farm animals as if they are crops. We call them factory farms; a factory is where you mass produce things, but animals aren’t things. They are treated as if they don’t have feelings. They have the same needs as ours: water, food, air, but most importantly, love. Why shouldn’t that be enough reason to give them the same love we’d give a human? They’re treated as though their main purpose is to be killed for food.

People say they love animals because we couldn’t imagine eating an animal we love, like our dogs, cats, horses etc, yet we eat pigs, cows, chickens, sheep etc willingly. But how much of a difference is it? In places like China they eat dogs and cats because they don’t own dogs and cats. People think it’s okay because most of them don’t have bonds with those animals in their day to day life.

I’ve always been told how important it is to have a balanced diet, and usually what people mean by that includes meat. Humans have the privilege of being omnivores, but that doesn’t mean they’re unhealthy if they don’t eat meat. I’ve found plenty of ways to get what I need from things that aren’t meat like beans, nuts, and tofu. Also, not every fake meat is gross. I promise there are good ones out there!

As humans we have trouble facing truth. If we think of what we eat as living, breathing beings it terrifies us. I want to make people aware of this.

 

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my second blog post. In this blog post I will be covering my feelings on global warming. I want to talk about this because many current events are related to this topic.

I do believe in global warming. I think it’s clearly real. Some people don’t believe in global warming. I have taken the time to understand their point of view since I know that in order to “fix” a problem I must look at both sides. I don’t expect that I will convince them, but I think that everyone should try to treat the planet better because the risks of global warming are so high. It’s bad enough that it has taken us this long to even start the debate about whether it’s real or not.

There are specific effects of global warming that we could prevent. By 2050, 15-35 % of species could be extinct. Weather would be more severe causing things like famine, fires, and flooding. Many states that are near the coast would go underwater. Climate change will affect all 50 states of the US, and will for sure affect the world.

We can help stop global warming. There are some basic things like turning off lights in rooms, not driving when it’s unnecessary, driving cars that don’t run on gas, timing yourself in the shower–anything to do with the idea of conserving energy.

We can educate others about this problem, starting with your family and slowing growing to the world. I was born in China and I plan to help change China’s pollution practices someday in a way that doesn’t change their culture. We can write letters to people who have a lot of power in contributing to global warming, like the government or people who own factories. The key is not to think, “I’m just one person, I’m not going to solve a big problem like global warming. Besides I’m sure there are other people working on this problem. It’s not my job to worry about it.” It’s just like in voting when people think, “My vote won’t count. It doesn’t matter,” because just as with voting, it does matter. It’s our future.

We only have one beautiful, amazing earth, our home. There is no replacement, so we’d better start acting fast, or else we will destroy both the earth and ourselves.